All Rise...

The Charge

Don't let them hear your heartbeat!

Opening Statement

One of the pinnacles of the Spanish horror boom of the 1970s, the Blind Dead
quadrology has retained a firm cult status over the last several decades, thanks
in no small part to its wildly imaginative monsters—a mounted faction of
undead, skeletal Knights Templar, spreading their medieval wrath in present-day
Portugal. Loosely based on the Templars' purported evil misdeeds in the 12th
Century, writer/director Amando de Ossorio's low-budget, gothic-tinged Blind
Dead shockers—Tombs of the Blind Dead, Return of the Evil
Dead, The Ghost Gallon, and Night of the Seagulls—are
exceptional, if not always well-crafted, horror epics that have been collected
on DVD for the first time by underground cult heroes Blue Underground.

Facts of the Case

Each of the four films in the Blind Dead series chronicles the afterlife
exploits of a sect of satanic Knights Templar. Drinking the blood of virgins
from nearby towns for their eternal life rituals in the 12th Century, the
Templars were eventually overtaken and killed by the horrified villagers, who
burned out their eyes so they would be unable to find their way back and exact
revenge. More than 700 years later, the mummified corpses of the evil Holy Order
are finally poised to rise again, and continue their reign of terror.

• Tombs of the Blind Dead On their way to a weekend
in the Portuguese countryside, Virginia's (María Elena Arpón,
Hunchback of the Morgue) sleazy boyfriend Roger (César Burner,
Green Inferno) starts to show a little too much interest in her friend
Betty (Lone Fleming, Journey to the Center
of the Earth). Jealous, Virginia jumps off the passenger train and heads
towards Berzano, a ruined Medieval monastery off in the distance. Everything
seems deserted when she arrives, but once night falls, the undead Knights
Templar rise from the graveyard, track her down and kill her. When Roger and
Betty decide to go back to locate Virginia the next morning, they discover that
her body has already been found by the local authorities, covered in bite marks.
They are told the frightful legend of the knights, a story that the police
insist is merely a fabrication used to keep the curious away from a smuggling
ring operating in the area. Not convinced, Roger invites head smuggler Pedro
(Joseph Thelman, When the Screaming Stops) and his girlfriend Nina
(Verónica Llimera, Foul Play) to
investigate the monastery, leading to a night they will never forget.

• Return of the Evil Dead As the townspeople of
Berzano prepare for the 500th anniversary of the execution of the satanic
Knights Templar, the sinister hunchback Murdo (José Canalejas, Django), shunned by the town, has other
plans. Sacrificing a young virgin, he initiates a ceremony to reanimate the
corpses of the knights, so they can reap their revenge. As the knights slaughter
the townspeople in a frenzy of blood, a few festival-goers manage to secure
themselves in a partially deteriorated church. While their undead pursuers wait
outside patiently, old flames re-ignite between firework pyrotechnician Jack
Marlowe (Tony Kendall, The Whip and the
Body) and his ex-girlfriend Vivienne (Esperanza Roy, The Midnight
Bride), while her current beau, the unscrupulous Mayor Duncan (Fernando
Sancho, The Possessed) sends others to their death in order to distract
the knights while he tries to make his own escape.

• The Ghost Gallon Fashion model Kathy (Blanca
Estrada, Monster Island) heads out for a week at sea for some sort of
ill-conceived publicity stunt, and promptly disappears after radioing a message
about some sort of ghost ship off in the distance. Her roommate and occasional
lover Noemi (Bárbara Rey, Night of the Sorcerers) wants to go look
for her, so she enlists the help of Professor Grüber (Carlos Lemos, The
Sweet Sound of Death), who is well-steeped in the legend of the Ghost
Galleon. Along with a small rescue party made up of Kathy's unscrupulous PR
handlers, Noemi heads out to sea, promptly finds the ship, and boards it.
Grüber soon discovers that the ship's bowels are full of wooden crates
housing the Blind Dead, but the others are more interested in filling their
pockets with the extravagant treasures they discover in a secret room. Bad
idea—the Templars rise from their eternal slumber to protect the booty,
forcing the plunderers to take refuge on deck with makeshift wooden crosses.

• Night of the Seagulls Country doctor Henry Stein
(Víctor Petit, Street Warriors) and his wife Joan (María Kosti,
Vengeance of the Zombies) are
posted at a small fishing village, but they're rebuffed by the rude locals.
After some investigating, Henry discovers that the Templars have the townspeople
in a grip of fear, returning every seven years for a week to drink the blood of
seven native virgins. When the Stein's maid, Lucy (Sandra Mozarowsky,
Hitler's Last Train) is taken from their home and tied up at the seashore
as an offering to the Templars, Henry rescues her, angering the Knights.
Anticipating the complete massacre of anyone left in the town in retaliation,
the townspeople head for the hills, leaving Henry and Joan to fend for
themselves as the Templars begin their attack.

The Evidence

In most surveys of cult film, the Blind Dead films are usually lumped in with
the zombie film explosion of the 1970s and '80s, a horror phenomenon that later
gripped Italy by storm; but in all truth, the series really deserves more
respect than that. Certainly, each film draws on the gut-munching work of zombie
kingpin George A. Romero, whose Night of the Living Dead was as
much a sensation in Europe as it was at home, but Tombs of the Blind Dead
and its bastard offspring are really some of the most unique horror efforts
committed to celluloid; ingeniously conceived, atmospheric shockers with truly
spine-tingling killer creatures.

Few low-budget horror films have a back story as historically rich as the
Blind Dead films. A 12th century sect of holy warriors formed to protect
pilgrims during the Crusades, the real-life Knights Templar eventually became
extremely powerful and corrupt as the their influence grew throughout Europe.
After the Pope dissolved the Order of the Knights Templar in 1312, its remaining
members were arrested, tortured and executed for a variety of wildly heretical
acts, including murder, homosexuality and devil worship—whether those
accusations were actually true will probably never be known. Still, the Templars
persisted, going underground in Spain and eventually being exonerated in
Portugal. Despite much scholarly research devoted to the Order, the Templar's
mythology remains vague and mysteriously sinister—perfect fodder for a
history-steeped horror film in which past atrocities come back to haunt the
present.

And it's these ghostly Templars that really carry the Blind Dead series.
Grim Reaper-styled skeletal monstrosities with eyeless gray-green skulls, wispy
beards and tattered robes, the Templars are some of the most impressible and
memorable monsters ever to appear on screen. Riding on similarly fossilized
horses and armed with rust-bitten swords, each death and decay-ridden knight is
part zombie, part mummy and part vampire, a nightmarish amalgamation of the most
recognizable figures of horror in literature and film. Shot in slow-motion atop
their steeds with purposely out-of-synch hoof beats, de Ossorio creates some
fantastic and intrinsically eerie sequences with his creations, as they bang on
doors with the handles of their swords or stand ominously at attention, waiting
out their intended victims.

De Ossorio's first Templar tale, Tombs of the Blind Dead, is an
unforgettable and highly original genre classic. Although the origin of the
blind dead Templars is marginally less gruesome here than in it is in later
films (we learn they were hung from trees as examples, until birds ate their
eyes out) the film demonstrates the evil rites that consumed the sect, with a
few graphic scenes that have them drinking the blood and eating the hearts of a
bevy of young girls. While admittedly stronger than many of the later chapters,
the cheap, melodramatic love triangle plot of Tombs of the Blind Dead is
barely passable—as with later slasher films, de Ossorio's characters are
little more than fleshy fodder for his nightmarish scenario. The pace drags in
many of these establishing sequences, but the film becomes much more interesting
once the Templars arise, and the characters find they must exploit the blindness
of their pursuers to survive.

Owing a much bigger debt to Night of the Living Dead, Return of
the Evil Dead is less a sequel than a complete re-imagining of the first
film. Where Tombs of the Blind Dead regrettably "passed on" the
resurrection curse to a zombified Virginia to wreak havoc back in the city, here
we get much more screen time for the knights, and that results in a much more
violent and gory film which is often considered the best of the four. Indeed,
the plot is slightly stronger and the characters are more clearly defined, as
they barricade themselves in an old church and succumb to internal strife, an
obvious nod to Romero's classic. Giving the film a political edge, however, the
greediest, most heartless individual turns out to be the Mayor, who is not above
any underhanded trick to escape the fate that surely awaits him and the
others.

After watching two films about 700-year-old blood drinking warriors
returning to life, I was fully prepared to suspend my disbelief for The Ghost
Gallon, but the second Blind Dead sequel is needlessly fixated on explaining
precisely how the phantom 16th century ship is stocked with the coffins of 12th
century: it apparently exists "in another dimension." Relocating the
action on a ship may seem like purely a cosmetic change, but it again changes
the dynamics of survival, and de Ossorio manages to add some interesting twists
here, including an exorcism, despite his limited setting and obvious miniscule
budget—probably the smallest of all the Blind Dead films. Return of the
Evil Dead upped the ante on gore and thrills, but the slackly-paced The
Ghost Gallon only has one onscreen death—not to mention just the
barest semblance of any plot.

Although a weak story still dominates most of the action, Night of the
Seagulls is in many ways a return to form for the series, yet another
variation on the Templar legend that lacks continuity with the earlier films.
The horses, absent from the last installment, are back, and so are the ominous
clip-clopping of their hooves that adds so much atmosphere to the proceedings.
There are some imaginative touches here that keep the long-in-the-tooth story
interesting, such as the bizarre silent conspiracy as the black-clad elders
solemnly offer up their young to keep themselves alive that in many ways makes
the townspeople as corrupt as their supposed zombie masters. Keeping the focus
on a husband and wife rather than a small group of one-dimensional adults is
also a definite improvement, but de Ossorio still has difficulty in trying to
elicit audience sympathy for their fate. Despite this sequel's seemingly
ridiculous title, we eventually learn that the nocturnal cries of the seagulls
are actually the screams of the Templars' past virginal victims!

While a great amount of care was taken in the design and preparation of the
undead Knights Templar, the same attention to detail does not carry through to
the rest of the picture. Each film is noticeably hurt by time and budgetary
constraints, not surprising since de Ossorio scripted the Blind Dead films at
night after returning from his job at a bank, and they were largely shot during
his vacations. This is especially a problem with The Ghost Gallon, which
wears its budget on its sleeve with some laughable model work that almost
undermines the whole film. Likewise, the newcomers and minor Spanish character
actors that make up each cast—the only people de Ossorio could
afford—are also pretty terrible and forgettable, putting even more focus
on their wraith-like predators.

A scratchy Tombs of the Blind Dead/Return of the Evil Dead double
feature DVD was released years ago by Anchor Bay, but Blue Underground's
beautiful remasters can easily be considered the definitive versions of these
films. Tombs of the Blind Dead is presented in both an 83-minute English
dub as well as an uncut 97-minute subtitled Spanish version that adds
considerable gore and plot development originally unseen in North America. The
Spanish transfer looks just great, boasting bright colors, rich detail and no
discernable print artifacts, while the dub is slightly less impressive, with
weaker contrast in some of the night scenes. The Return of the Evil Dead
disc also boasts two different versions—an uncensored Spanish cut running
91 minutes and an 87-minute English dub. The Spanish version, making its North
American debut, is a little bit grainer than the first film, but it's still
impressive, just a slight notch below the first film. The Ghost Galleon
is just about as good as Tombs of the Blind Dead, although the picture
itself opts for dull greens and blues, so it often seems a little darker than it
should. Things finish up on a fine note with another solid transfer for Night
of the Seagulls, which, like The Ghost Galleon, can be watched uncut
in English or in the original Spanish with subtitles. Audio is an acceptable
mono all the way around, with only the very occasional audio artifact to contend
with.

Despite some great technical presentations, there are fewer extras than you
might expect on this set. Besides an alternate opening sequence found on the
Tombs of the Blind Dead disc under the title Revenge of the Planet
Ape (which tries to pass the film off as a Planet of the Apes sequel!) each disc
includes just a few trailers and a standard still and poster gallery. The
majority of the set's extras are found on the last disc, entitled Amando de
Ossorio: Director. Here, you'll find the subtitled Spanish documentary
"The Last Templar," a far-too-brief 24-minute affair that features an
overview of de Ossorio's career with comments from film historians, biographers
and peers, including Paul Naschy. It's most interesting when it delves past the
Blind Dead films to look at de Ossorio's other work, such as the banned
anti-capital punishment film, The Black Flag. "Unearthing the Blind
Dead" is the final on-camera interview with de Ossorio before his death,
and it digs a little deeper into the saga of how these films were actually put
together. "Farewell to Spain's Knight of Horror" is four pages of text
on de Ossorio that is easily trumped by the included box set booklet,
"Knights of Terror" by Nigel J. Burrell. This is a very nice little
publication, offering extensive plot descriptions and analysis, with a history
of the Templar Knights and tons of advertising artwork and stills. And let's not
forget that the set comes packaged in a very cool coffin box, emblazoned with
the ankh, the graveyard symbol of the Templars' immortality!

Closing Statement

Renowned for their fine work in resurrecting obscure classics, this is Blue
Underground's most momentous undertaking of 2005, an absolute must for the cult
film fanatic. While I would have liked a few more extras, this long-awaited set
captures some of the most chilling films Euro-horror has to offer.